The use of portable electronic devices and mobile communication devices has increased dramatically in recent years. Mobile communication devices such as two-way radios can operate in various environments. As an example, Two-way radios can be mounted in vehicles for allowing communication between users over a wide area. Two-way radios can be deployed and mounted within police cars for providing dispatch or communication operations. In practice, the radios can be configured to operate over a radio communication channel. As one example, radios can be set to a single physical channel which allows voice and data communications to be sent to other radios that are tuned to the common channel.
Vehicle repeater systems (VRS) are currently used in radio communication systems to provide coverage to portable subscriber units (PSU) in areas where the coverage provided by the fixed system is insufficient. In one arrangement a VRS can be placed at a fixed location to extend coverage in a fixed area. In another arrangement, a VRS can be mounted within a vehicle that can be deployed to different regions. PSUs within proximity of the vehicle having the VRS can communicate amongst one another on a single channel provided by the VRS. The VRS typically consists of a mobile radio (MSU), generally operating on a fixed system, that is physically connected to a mobile repeater (VR). The MSU provides the radio communication to a fixed network equipment (FNE) on the fixed system, and the VR interfaces to the PSU on a conventional channel for providing talk groups. Multiple PSUs can use a single VRS for creating a talk group at any time if the PSUs are all on the same channel. However, the MR can only support one channel of communication at a time, and hence, only one talk group at a time. Accordingly, PSUs must be on the same channel to communicate with one another when operating on a VRS.
A single vehicular repeater system (VRS) can extend a coverage area of a fixed system, such as a trunked radio infrastructure. The VRS can provide one physical channel of communication to support one talk group at a time. The VRS can support data, image, or audio. Multiple VRSs can be deployed to a common site to provide support for multiple talk group activity. In prior art systems, one of the VRSs is designated as a master device, and the other VRSs are designated as slave devices to repeat radio communication for the master device. Because each VRS is only capable of providing one physical communication channel, the multiple VRSs, as configured together in the arrangement of the prior art, can only support one talk group at a time.
Because a VRS can only support one talk group at a time, a user of a PSU must wait for another user to release control of the channel. In such regard, the user must wait for talk group activity to cease before changing talk groups to acquire the single channel. In situations where multiple vehicles are deployed to a site with multiple talk groups, contention exists for the single channel. That is, since there is only one physical channel on a VRS only one of the talk groups can be useable at a time. A need therefore exists for providing support to multiple talk groups at a common site.